Mr. Djordje Ratkovica, Director General of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Directorate of Civil Aviation (BHDCA), participated as a member of the delegation led by Mr. Damir Hadzic, Minister of Communications and Transport of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in a meeting, held on 25 February 2014 in Brussels, with Mr. Frank Brenner, Director General of EUROCONTROL, which discussed the process of taking over the provision of air navigation services in the airspace of Bosnia and Herzegovina by the Bosnia and Herzegovina Air Navigation Services Agency (BHANSA).

The Minister of Communications and Transport of BIH took this opportunity to announce that, in line with the Transition Plan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, i.e. BHANSA, will start initial operations on 16 October 2014, whereas air traffic control services for the upper airspace will be launched in mid-October 2015.“Bosnia and Herzegovina is fully committed to cooperating with its neighbouring countries in order to finalise, as successfully as possible, the transition period of taking over the responsibility for providing air traffic separation services in its airspace. Ahead of us lay new activities that require maximum commitment from the BHANSA’s operational staff in the context of implementation activities, while the BHDCA is expected to carry out the BHANSA certification process”, said Mr. Hadzic.

EUROCONTROL noted the progress in implementing the BHACC network transition activities, particularly in the last several months.“All the envisaged activities require changes in the global European airspace network, the planning of which has taken into account this new change introduced by the BHANSA’s start of operations” said Mr. Brenner, and stressed that EUROCONTROL has always provided technical support to Bosnia and Herzegovina since it joined the organisation in 2004, and it will continue to do so in the future. He said that Bosnia and Herzegovina has two agreements currently in progress regarding support and implementation of the BHACC network transition – Phase 1, the first of which being an agreement with the BHDCA on the provision of support for developing and improving resources and processes of the National Supervisory Authority (NSA) which was concluded in August 2013, and an agreement between the BHANSA and the Network Manager addressing the main steps for the preparation of the Transition Plan, concluded in November 2013.

Mr. Djordje Ratkovica, Director General of the BHDCA, stated that the agreement between the BHDCA and EUROCONTROL has been undergoing implementation in its entirety, by way of five work packages comprising legislation, development and improvement of supervisory processes, civil-military activities, evaluation of human resources for NSA-related tasks, as well as NSA personnel training.“For the BHDCA the most important segment is human resources development. In other words, it is necessary to strengthen professional competences of the employees so they can be fully prepared to carry out BHANSA certification processes, and in this meeting we proposed a series of training courses to be organized at the BHDCA premises”, Mr. Ratkovica said.